


Darkly Dreaming Duo

by IsolaVirtuosa



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: 1x2, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-20
Updated: 2014-07-20
Packaged: 2018-02-09 16:28:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1989825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IsolaVirtuosa/pseuds/IsolaVirtuosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Preventer Agent and resident sociopath Duo Maxwell leads the investigation of a mysterious series of murders on L2.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Darkly Dreaming Duo

            It was so easy to convince people that you were human.  A smile, a joke, a laugh.  The right words, the right facial expressions.  A box of donuts.  As long as you knew how to fake it, everyone was happily fooled.

            “Morning, Maxwell,” Agent Reyes chirped as I elbowed open the door to the office.  “Ooh, is that a bear claw I see?” she asked, practically salivating as she eyed the open box of donuts I was carrying.  She quickly snagged it from the box and scurried back to her desk.

            “Morning,” I said.  “Donuts for all.”

            “You are truly a god among men,” Agent Lancaster commented, crossing the small office to examine the contents of my box.

            “Yes, well,” I said, with a shrug.

            Lancaster snorted, pulling out a jelly roll.

            “Is Halperin in the john or something?” I asked, putting the box of donuts down on my desk and grabbing a sprinkle-covered one for myself.

            “He didn’t come in yet,” Lancaster said with a shrug, finishing off his donut in a final large gulp and reaching around partition between our desks to snag another one.

            “More donuts for us,” Reyes said cheerfully, sliding her chair over to my desk and grabbing another donut as well.

            Reyes and Lancaster continued to cheerfully stuff their faces while I smiled and nodded at their banal chatter.  I was tired, having not slept well the previous night (completely bizarre for me), and I just wanted them to go on their merry way and leave me alone (completely normal for me).

            People were like insects, always buzzing around me for attention.  It was beyond irritating, but I never showed it.  I just smiled my big, dumb smile and let them carry on.

            There wasn’t much to do at work.  L2 was not exactly brimming with terrorists as of late, leaving we four of the L2 Preventers with shit to do.  We were mostly glorified police officers, called in to help the local police when things got hairy.

            Halperin had been working a weird murder case with the locals, but he was supposed to report in to me that morning, so after Reyes and Lancaster finally left my personal space, I picked up the phone and called him.  While the phone rang I gnawed on my third donut.  The good thing about an office of four people was that a dozen donuts really lasted.

            “Halperin.  Leave a message.”

            I licked the powdered sugar from my fingers as the answering service shrilled a beep in my ear.  “Hey, where the fuck are you?” I asked conversationally.  “Call me when you get this.”

            “You think he got a lead on the case?” Lancaster called over the partition.

            “More like got a lead on a bottle of booze,” Reyes said with a snort.

            I spent the morning shifting through some intel I’d gotten from L1 about a suspicious shipment to our fair colony.  It stank like a drug deal, which was beyond boring.  Our little Preventer cell had never seen anything more interesting than robot dog smuggling, which was only interesting due to its sheer patheticness.

            When it was lunch time and I still hadn’t heard from Halperin, I decided as his boss it would probably be best if I took some kind of action.  Not that I really cared.  Let the guy sleep off his hangover.

            “On your way back from lunch can you two go pick up Halperin?” I requested.

            “What’s in it for us?” Reyes asked with a grin as she hovered around my desk.

            “You get to keep your job,” I said, echoing her grin.

            “Touché,” she murmured, snagging Lancaster’s arm and dragging him off to lunch.

            I manned the office while they were out, in case any horrible terrorist attacks might occur during the lunch hour.  Mostly I played solitaire and sang along with the radio.

            When it was about time for my little subordinates to be coming back from lunch, the phone rang.

            “Preventers L2, this is Maxwell,” I said.

            “Hey boss,” Lancaster said.  “Look, we’re at Halperin’s and he’s not here.”

            “You broke in and looked around like I taught you?”

            “Of course.”

            “Hm,” I mused.  “His car there?”

            “No.”

            “He’s probably dead in a gutter somewhere,” Reyes called out helpfully into the general direction of the phone.

            “Great, well can you two crack detectives find me the body?” I requested.

            “Will do,” Lancaster said.

            “Okay, I’m going to head out to lunch, so call me on my cell when you find the dumbass.”

            “Gotcha,” Lancaster acknowledged.

            “Later, bossman!” Reyes yelled.

            I hung up the phone, not particularly feeling anything.  Halperin getting drunk and not showing up for work should probably have filled me with some kind of self-righteous anger, but mostly it just seemed so pathetically human that all I could do was feel pity for him.

            I tucked my cell phone into my back pocket and headed out for lunch.  I stopped at the deli down the street and picked up two sandwiches before getting into my car and heading to the university.

            Heero was in his lab, leaning over some kind of bubbling concoction, seemingly unbothered by the fog clouding up his glasses.

            “Hey,” I said, hoping to startle him with my sudden appearance.

            “Hey,” he answered blandly, still staring intently at his little science experiment.

            I sighed.  Heero was still the only person in the world I couldn’t sneak up on.  It was like a black mark on my permanent record.

            I watched him watch the bubbling for a while, then got bored and went to sit on his desk.  “I brought lunch.”

            “Is this a date?” Heero asked, mouth twitching in an amused smile though he still didn’t look at me.

            “Business, actually,” I said.

            “So we’re not going to your place afterwards?”

            “Hey, don’t rule that out,” I said, giving him my flashiest and most charming of grins.

            “I told you not to do that,” Heero said.

            “Do what?” I complained, but the smile was already dropping from my face.

            “You know,” he said.

            “You weren’t even looking,” I muttered, unwrapping my sandwich and taking a savage bite.

            “I can hear it in your voice.”

            “Fuck you.”

            “Duo.”

            I continued to gnaw on my sandwich, hoping he’d hurry up with whatever the hell it was he was doing.

            I had finished my sandwich and eaten half of his by the time he was done.  I still wasn’t sure what he had achieved by staring at a beaker full of bubbling liquid beyond looking like a deranged mad scientist.

            “Did you save me anything?” he asked, pulling out his chair and sitting down.

            “You never remember to eat anyway,” I said, offering him the half-eaten sandwich.

            Heero took a bite, chewing it mechanically.

            “Are you not even going to savor the seven meats and assorted cheeses?” I asked, staring at him comically aghast as he swallowed the bite without any relish or appreciation.

            “Stop.”

            “It’s not like it’s easy to,” I said, glaring at him.

            “You should just not do it at all in the first place,” Heero answered, taking another perfunctory bite.

            “We can’t all be robot boys like you,” I said, leaning down and stealing a bite.

            Heero leaned in, nipping at my bottom lip before giving me a proper kiss.

            I smiled, one of my few, genuine ones.

            “Why can’t you always do it like that?” he asked, giving my lips a last lick before returning to his sandwich.

            I didn’t answer him, because the truth was too sappy and pathetic.  It was because he was the only person who could make me genuinely smile.  After all the death of loved ones that I had experienced in my young life, I hadn’t known that I could feel something beyond mild apathy towards another person before I met Heero.  Well, before I met Heero, shot him, cursed him for stealing my Gundam parts, watched him blow himself up, and was rescued by him from my execution.  It took a while.  Even then, it wasn’t until he followed me to L2 that we started our Whatever This Was.

            “What the fuck are you doing here?!” I’d articulately asked when he’d shown up at my office unannounced.

            Heero gave me one of his ‘bitch, please’ looks and shoved a bunch of official-looking papers into my hands.

            “What the hell, I don’t need another agent,” I said, scowling at the papers.

            “Try actually reading them,” Heero said in that infuriating way of his that crawled under my skin.

            “You read them,” I growled, shoving them into his chest.

            Reyes let out a gasp.

            I suddenly realized that we had an audience of three, with Reyes, Halperin, and Lancaster gaping at me and Heero’s friendly little exchange like they were witnessing the Eve Wars or something.

            Heero continued to stare at me evenly.

            “Just tell me why you’re here, jeez,” I finally spat out.  I hated awkward silences.

            “Moron,” Heero said, and I detected a hint of affection.

            It was my turn to stare.

            “As my transfer papers clearly explain, I am a consulting agent currently residing on L2,” Heero said.

            “What does that explain?” I asked.  “That doesn’t explain anything.  What the hell is a consulting agent even?”

            My subordinates were beginning to cower.

            “Read the papers,” Heero said with a shrug, pushing them into my chest with more force than necessary.

            “Who the hell has time to read twenty page Preventer documents?!”

            “It looks like you have plenty of time around here.”

            “Yuy.”

            “Satou.”

            I blinked.  “Who the fuck is Satou?”

            “I am.”

            “Uh… did you get amnesia or some shit?”

            “My name is Heero Satou now,” Heero said.

            “That is god awful.”

            “Like Duo Maxwell is any better.”

            “Fuck you and your horse.”

            “Looking forward to it.”

            And just as suddenly as he appeared, Heero Yuy now Satou disappeared from my office.

            “Holy shit, I thought he was going to kill you,” Reyes blurted out.

            “Or you were going to kill him,” Halperin said, eyes flicking from me to the closed door uneasily.

            “Nah, we’re old friends,” I said, passing the papers that Heero had given me off to Halperin since he was standing the closest to me.  “Read these and summarize it to me later.”

            The summary was that Mr. Satou was a forensic anthropologist who could be consulted by the Preventers when his expertise was needed.  He was finishing up his doctorate at the University of L2, where he had a lab to work on his doctoral thesis as well as do jobs for the local police.

            I laughed through Halperin’s entire summary.

            “Fucking Heero Yuy,” I said with a snort.

            I went over to his place after work that day since his address had been oh-so-conveniently provided in his transfer papers.

            “You are hilarious,” I said as a way of greeting.  “And why are you wearing glasses?”

            Heero stepped aside to let me in, ignoring the question.

            “It’s a good look for you,” I continued.  “But don’t even try to tell me that you have less than perfect vision.  Are you trying to fit in with all your lab geek friends or something?  Because-”

            “Stop talking.”

            I made a face at him, accepting the cup of tea he passed me even though I hated tea.

            “That’s better,” he said with a little twitch of a smile.

            “Fuck you,” I muttered, taking a drink.  “Blegh.”

            Sitting on his counter and drinking shitty tea, I got to listen to the whole story.  That Heero had stolen the last name and academic background from some poor sap so he could come live and work in the colonies.

            “Yeah, but why L2?” I asked, wrinkling my nose.  “No one wants to live on L2.”

            Heero just shrugged, being Heero.

            We started our Whatever a few minutes later on his couch.  I’d say that we were having sex, but that wasn’t quite right.  I mean, did something have to go inside something else for it to count as sex?  And did both parties have to get off?  To be honest, I wasn’t all that interested in sex, but I was very interested in what Heero and I did.

            It was complicated, but I liked how things were.

            “So, what business brought you here?” Heero asked, bringing me back to the present and his sandwich.

            I stole another bite.  “Are you working that murder from the bootleg district?”

            “Yeah,” Heero said, gesturing vaguely towards the back of the lab where random body parts were lined up on a table.

            “The guy was cut up?” I asked, squinting at the menagerie of body parts.  I felt the God of Death inside of me rise up, stretching his wings in peaked interest.

            Heero’s own monster seemed to flare up behind his eyes, responding to mine as he always did.  “He was,” he said in a low, flat voice, the voice he used to use when he was shooting guys down left and right with his gundam.  “And you know what was interesting?” he asked, the paper covering his sandwich suddenly dropped to the ground as he reached out to touch me.

            “What?” I asked.  The God of Death was very, very interested to know.

            “There was no blood,” he whispered as he pressed his lips to my ear.

            I shivered.  “No… blood…?” I repeated.

            “Not even a drop.”

            For some reason, I found that absolutely thrilling.

            Heero nuzzled my neck.

            My fingers dug into the flesh of his arm in response, crushing and bruising.

            Heero let out a soft, contented sigh.

            “How could there be no blood?” I marveled.  There was always blood.

            “Don’t know yet,” Heero said, nose pressed to my neck.  “Wasn’t one of your guys working the case?”

            “Yeah, I put Halperin on it,” I said.  “He was supposed to report in to me this morning, but he never showed up to work.”

            “Got drunk and passed out all day again?” Heero asked, straightening up.

            I slid a leg around his waist, keeping him close.  “Probably.”

            “Probably?” Heero repeated, eyes studying mine.

            “I just have one my feelings, ya know?”

            Heero nodded.  He trusted my instincts.

            “Tell me if you get anything on this psycho, okay?” I said, letting my leg drop as I slid off the desk and onto the floor.  “I gotta get back to the office.”

            “Paperclips to rearrange?” Heero asked drily.

            “Post-it notes to alphabetize, actually,” I said.  “Come over tonight?”

            Heero nodded solemnly.  He pushed his glasses back up his nose, the glare on the fake lenses hiding the monster lurking behind them.

            It felt wrong leaving him.  It always felt wrong leaving him.  Because as soon as I stepped outside of the lab, I had to put my mask back on.  The upward stretch of my mouth, the crinkling of my eyes.  The look that said, ‘hey, I’m a nice guy.’

            I was anything but.  I was a cold hard killer, a mass-murdering terrorist.  I knew what I was, and I accepted it.  Heero knew what I was, and he accepted it, too, because he was the same.

            All of us were the same, really.  The five gundam pilots.  All of us monsters hiding in cute little teenage packages during the war.  We had been too young when it had gotten into us.  Now we were stuck with it, the monster inside of us demanding blood.

            Heero dealt with his by cutting up dead bodies.

            I dealt with mine by cutting up Heero.

            I returned to an empty office.

            I whiled away the last few hours of my workday by alphabetizing post-it notes by color.  Then I made a post-it note rainbow that stretched across the entire back wall of our office.  Your tax dollars, hard at work.

            I drove home, lulled into a peaceful state by the homicidal driving on L2.  The honked horns, the middle fingers.  This was humanity showing their true face.  I’d show them mine, but it’d probably freak them out.

            “Agent Satou gives me the creeps,” Reyes had complained to me one day.

            “He’s not so bad,” I said with a shrug.  “You just have to learn how to interpret the native grunting of his people into the English language.”

            “It’s his eyes,” Lancaster chimed in.

            “Yes!” said Reyes.  “Exactly!  They’re like…”

            “Terrifying?” Lancaster suggested.

            “Soulless.”

            We all turned to look at Halperin who was standing by the coffee machine.

            “That’s the word,” Reyes said with an enthusiastic nod.

            I studied Halperin.

            His eyes met mine.  “You get the same look, Maxwell.  When you’re with him.”

            Reyes giggled nervously.  “Are you saying that bossman has no soul?”

            Halperin raised an eyebrow at me.

            The calculation left my eyes, replaced with a twinkle.  “I might not if you ask my ex.”

            Reyes and Lancaster snorted at that.

            Halperin continued to look at me warily.

            Why had I just remembered that?

            Heero was waiting in my apartment when I got home.  He didn’t have a key, but I didn’t really care if he just let himself in.  I wasn’t hiding anything from him.

            “Whacha cooking?” I asked, pulling at the knot in my tie.

            “Veal marsala and farfalle.”

            “Fancy,” I said, nipping on his ear before going to sort through the pile of mail he’d left for me on the kitchen counter.

            Heero continued to cook while I changed out of my work clothes, then flopped onto the couch and turned on the TV.  We never talked much unless there was something to talk about.  It was comfortable.  When Heero started putting the food on the table, I got up without having to be told and joined him.

            “Find your missing agent?” Heero asked while we ate.

            “Nope,” I said.

            “Hn,” Heero said, the single syllable showing his keen interest in the topic.

            “You find anything out about the vampire chopper?” I asked through a mouthful of veal.

            “He uses medical precision when he dismembers the bodies,” Heero said.  “He uses excellent tools and probably has some medical training.  I haven’t found the means of removing the blood yet.”

            “Who was the vic?”

            “A former Alliance soldier,” Heero said, holding his fork out to me.

            I bit the meat off of his fork accordingly, chewing contentedly.  Heero was a decent cook, even if he was more interested in eating tasteless military rations or space food.  I couldn’t prove it, but I knew that the only reason he’d learned how to cook was for me.

            “He was stationed on L2 from the 80s,” Heero continued, keeping the next bite for himself.

            I stared longingly at his meat, mine having long since disappeared into the depths of my bottomless stomach.

            “After the Alliance collapsed, he started bootlegging vid discs to make ends meet,” Heero explained.  “The storefront where his body was displayed was his own shop.”

            “Wait, those chopped up pieces were _displayed_ in a store window?” I asked, momentarily distracted from Heero’s food.  The God of Death inside of me let out an amused chuckle.

            “Yeah,” Heero said, and the darkness inside of him let out its own chuckle.

            “That’s pretty fucked up,” I said.  “What kind of display was it?  Like were the body parts all lined up in the shape of a body, or…?”

            Heero held out his fork to me and I happily chomped down his veal.  “You know that new movie about the crucifixion of Jesus?”

            I nodded.

            “Have you seen the posters for it?”

            “Yeah, there’s a bigass cross with the guy hanging from it.”

            Heero stared at me waiting for me to get it.

            When I didn’t, he fed me some more veal.  “The body parts were nailed to a cross that was advertising the movie.”

            That really appealed to me.  I’d had a brief religious upbringing, and religious iconography and symbols just did it for me.  I’d worn a priest’s outfit while committing mass murder, after all.

            Heero passed his plate to me, letting me finish it up while I thought about the strange murder.  He started washing the dishes, knowing I wouldn’t.

            After I’d eaten everything that could possibly be eaten, I joined Heero by the sink, resting my chin on his shoulder.  Heero washed and I just watched him until he was finished.

            He dried his hands on the towel, then turned to face me.  His glasses slid down his nose, and I knew what that look in his eyes meant.

            “Did you bring me anything interesting to play with?” I asked, head tilting to the side.

            “Go look in your room.”

            There was a spring in my step as I walked over to my bed and picked up the little black box.  I pulled off the top, revealing a shiny, surgical grade scalpel.

            “Do you like it?” he asked, coming up behind me.

            I nodded, taking it out of the box.  The weight felt nice in my hand.  I pressed the tip lightly into my finger and some blood bubbled up to meet it.  “Very nice,” I breathed out.

            It was time for the God of Death to come out and play.

            Heero was always quiet during our little encounters.  The only way I could tell that this was actually what he wanted was to watch the slitting of his eyes, to feel the shudders of his body urging me on as I sliced into his flesh.

            I lapped at the blood with my tongue, savoring the metallic taste as I pushed my finger into the cuts I’d made going up Heero’s ribs.

            He came with a soft gasp, and I nuzzled his chest contentedly.

            We were two very fucked up people.  I was aware of this.  But who cared?  It wasn’t like we were bothering anyone with our fuckery.

            “You staying over tonight?” I asked, padding off to the bathroom for my med kit.

            “Yeah,” he said.

            I treated all of Heero’s cuts with antiseptic before getting him dressed in one of my t-shirts and flannels.

            “Aren’t you adorable,” I cooed, poking him in his cute little cheeks.

            “Stop.”

            “You’re no fun,” I said, but I let all the emotions drain from my face.

            “I like the real you better,” he said, touching my cheek.

            “Sap.”

            Heero growled at me then, making sure to let me see that his monster was bigger than mine.

            I shrugged, and went out to the living room to read a book.

            Heero knew that he’d intimidated me, though.

            We moved around each other in the apartment, barely interacting.  I just liked having his presence there.  It contented me, and what more could you ask for from this shitty life than contentment?

            Heero was a good boy who always went to bed on time, while I tended to stay up late, aimlessly looking at the internet or watching TV.  But since he was staying over, I scampered off to bed by eleven, just so I could snuggle under the covers with my very sexy Whatever He Was.

            “Good night, Duo,” Heero said flatly, and I knew his eyes were closed and he was trying to go to sleep despite my insistent cuddling.

            “Night, babe,” I said, fingers sliding under his shirt and running over his bandaged ribs.  I fingered my handiwork, smiling myself to sleep.

            I had a dream.

            I never had dreams.  Except for two nights ago, when this whole restless sleep thing had started.

            Tonight’s dream was very similar.  I felt like a hunter, stalking my prey.  What my prey was, I didn’t know, but I had to have it.  There was a need inside of me, a need inside of the God of Death.

            Blood.

            I woke up with a gasp.

            Heero was already up, and the smell of eggs and bacon wafted into the room.

            “Weird,” I muttered, sitting up and running a hand through my bangs, pushing them out of my eyes.  I felt kind of woozy and not quite awake.

            The smell of blood.

            I looked at my hands.  Little brown lines were caked under my nails.  “Damn,” I muttered, getting up.

            Heero was wearing the stupid apron that I bought him that said ‘kiss the cook’ with a big heart etched under the words.

            I smiled, doing as the apron commanded despite Heero’s proximity to dangerous objects.

            “Hey,” he said with a little smile before turning his attention back to the omelets he was making.

            “Sorry,” I said as I moved towards the refrigerator to get some juice.

            “What for?”

            “For clawing you to death in my sleep.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “Uh, this,” I said, holding up my bloody nails for his inspection as I poured the juice with my other hand.

            “I think I would have noticed if you were clawing me,” Heero said.

            “It’s not your blood?” I asked, studying the stains curiously as I set the orange juice carton back in the refrigerator.

            “Are you cheating on me?” Heero asked, amusement creeping into his voice.

            “Yes, Heero, I get up in the middle of the night, find a weirdo masochist and claw him with my fingernails in order to cheat on you.”

            “Moron,” he said, scooping the omelets and bacon onto plates.  “Here.”

            I took the plate, walking over to the table.  “I could get used to this, you know.”

            “Getting up in the middle of the night and clawing random people?”

            “No you dick, you,” I said.

            “What about me?”

            “You.  Being here.  Cooking for me,” I said, delving into my omelet.  “God, that’s good.”

            Heero didn’t say anything, but he had that asshole smirk on his face that meant he was pleased.

            My cell phone started buzzing where I’d left it on the kitchen counter.  I got up and answered with an agitated grunt.

            “Hey, uh…” Lancaster’s voice trailed off.

            “What?” I growled.

            “I uh… well uh…”

            “Spit it out, I’m trying to eat breakfast here,” I said crabbily.  Everyone knew not to mess with me when I was getting my grub on.

            “So I went to Halperin’s this morning because you know I was worried and I went inside and he still hadn’t been back and we couldn’t get a lead on his car but then I was driving by the office and his freaking car was there so I was like what the hell man and I went up to the office and I opened the door and… I found Halperin.”

            “Congratulations,” I said tiredly.  “Would you like a sticker?  A balloon, perhaps?  A nice pat on the back?”

            “Boss, you don’t… I _found_ Halperin.  In pieces.”

            “What’s he so broken up about, did his favorite hooker dump him?”

            “Boss,” Lancaster said, his voice sounding strangled.  “Literal.  Physical.  Pieces.”

            I mulled that over.  “Halperin’s dead?”

            “Yes,” he said, and his voice cracked.

            “I’ll be right down,” I said.  “You call the locals?”

            “Not yet.”

            “Call them,” I said, sitting back down at the table.  “Make sure whoever’s in charge of that case Halperin was working comes, too.”

            “Yes, sir.”

            I hung up, feeling very agitated.

            “Your man’s dead?” Heero asked with a raised eyebrow.

            “Dead and in pieces,” I said, shoveling the last of my omelet into my mouth.

            “Damn,” Heero said, but the word didn’t really hold any weight.  “You’ve got to go?”

            “Yeah,” I said, opening my mouth as Heero pushed some bacon into it.  I gave him a bacony kiss, then went to wash up and get dressed real quick.

            Heero was washing the dishes when I reemerged.

            “I’ll probably stop by the lab later,” I said.  “If I have time in this clusterfuck of a day.”

            “Okay,” Heero said, giving me a nod as I rushed out the door.

            I broke a few speed limits on my quick commute to the office, but that wasn’t anything new.  I was still driving too slow for a lot of drivers on the mean streets of L2.

            There were a couple of patrol cars already parked out front of the office.  I pulled into my space and got out, approaching the building.

            “Bossman!”

            Reyes ran into me with her arms open, clinging.

            I held in a sigh.  “Hey.”

            “What the fuck,” she said.

            “What the fuck,” I agreed, gently extricating her and moving us inside.

            I was not prepared for the sight in front of me.

            “It’s like he’s the fucking pot of gold at the end of the rainbow,” Reyes breathed.

            I was glad she said it and not me, because I really don’t think I could have kept a straight face.  And it really wasn’t very human to burst into amused laughter when faced with the cut up body of your dead co-worker.  Piled in a big black pot.  At the end of a post-it note rainbow.

            “Christ,” was all I could say.

            The God of Death did all the laughing for me inside of my head.

            This killer was amusing, I had to give him that.  Sure, it was horrible that my agent was dead.  But god.  It was funny.

            I was talking to Sergeant Martin who was in charge of the bootleg district murder, when who should waltz into my office but Mr. Wufei Chang.

            “Where’s Maxwell?!” he demanded, striding right past the other agents and police officers.

            “Cool your tits, Chang,” I said, leaning around the partition surrounding my desk and motioning him over.

            “What have you done, Maxwell?” he growled, his dragon flaring up behind his eyes like it was going to eat me.

            “Me?” I squeaked indignantly, suddenly having unsettling flashbacks to the previous night’s dream.

            “We have never in the history of the Preventers had an agent murdered, cut up, and dumped in his office,” he said, like all of this was my fault.

            “Sorry to have ruined the agency’s streak with that one,” I said, leaning back into my chair.  “This is Sergeant Martin, she’s leading the investigation.”

            “I’ll be leading the investigation,” Wufei stated sharply.

            “Uh…” I said.

            “Excuse me?” Sergeant Martin growled, rising to her feet and ready for a confrontation.

            “This isn’t your jurisdiction,” I pointed out, trying to ease the tension.  Further bloodshed in the office would be amusing but counterproductive.

            “My jurisdiction is all of goddamn space,” Wufei spat out.  “Now get me up to speed and then get the hell out of here.”

            Sergeant Martin just stared at him.

            “Your people skills have really improved, Wu,” I commented, grabbing his arm and pulling him aside.  “’Scuse us,” I called to the angry sergeant.

            “Get your hands off of me,” Wufei said in his surly way.

            I rolled my eyes at him.  “Seriously, what are you doing here?”

            “What am I doing here?” he repeated.

            I stared at him expectantly.

            “An agent has been _murdered_.”

            “Yeah, and I’ve got it covered,” I said with a shrug.

            “Maxwell, have you not connected the dots yet?”

            “Uh, what dots?” I asked.  “There were dots?”

            “Both victims are connected to you.”

            “Huh?” I said.  “No, they’re not.”

            “That soldier was involved in the Maxwell Church Massacre.”

            I froze.  “How can you know that?” I finally whispered.

            “Because it’s my job, Maxwell,” Wufei said.  His expression had softened a bit, and he was looking much less like a smarmy douche.  “As soon as that murder hit the computer database it was flagged to us.”

            “Shit,” I said.  I was thinking about the dreams I’d had the nights before the bodies were found, filled with a call for blood.  But I didn’t… I couldn’t…

            “I’m going to act as your bodyguard.”

            “Huh?”

            “You’re probably the killer’s objective.”

            “That doesn’t make sense.”

            “Duo, something strange is going on here and it all comes back to you.”

            “Shit.”

We were both quiet then, only to be interrupted by the deeply delicious belly laugh of Sally Po.

            “Sally’s here, too?” I asked, scratching at the back of my neck as my eyes finally located her standing with Sergeant Martin.  The two seemed to be getting along like a couple of old friends.  “I see she’s saved you from another PR nightmare.”

            “I don’t need a woman to save me,” he said, but I think it was said affectionately as he gazed at his long-time partner.

            “Get a room, god,” I said.

            Wufei gave me a withering look.

            I snorted.  “And by the way, I don’t need a bodyguard.”

            “Yes, you do.”

            “Disagree,” I said, walking towards the ladies.

            “Maxwell, for someone allegedly so stealthy, you sure do get captured by the enemy a lot,” Wufei commented.

            I twitched.  “You got caught on the moon, too, bitch.”

            I think Wufei took offense to me calling him bitch, but we had already reached Sally and she was shooting him a warning look that had him keeping his mouth shut.  God that woman was fantastic.  Wufei’s bitchmaster.

            Sally had, as expected, smoothed things out as best she could with the locals.  Sergeant Martin glared at Wufei when he came over, but then returned to nodding congenially at Sally.

            “Thanks so much for your help,” Sally said to the sergeant, looping her arm around mine.  “We’ll be taking care of Agent Maxwell, but anything you guys can get us about this psycho will really help.”

            Sally was all smiles and charm as she led me out of the office.  As soon as we were on the street, she let go of my arm and smacked me in the head.

            “What the hell?” I protested, rubbing at my abused noggin.

            “What did you get yourself into, Duo?” Sally asked, not sounding impressed at all.  “Jesus, this is a fuckatron.”

            “‘Fuckatron’?” I repeated, but Wufei just shook his head like I shouldn’t even question it.

           “Do you know how many agents have been murdered in the five year history of the Preventers?” Sally asked.

            “Uh, I dunno, a bunch?” I suggested.

            “One, Agent Maxwell, the answer is one.”

            “I would think that number would be higher,” I said.

            “Agents die in the line of duty, yes, but no one has ever been _murdered_ before,” Sally explained.

            “And this is somehow my fault?”

            “It seems that way.”

            “Cool,” I said, unlocking the door of my car.  “You want to go see the coroner?”

            Sally and Wufei both climbed into the back of my car without another word.  Apparently I was their chauffeur.

            “How is Heero, anyway?” Sally asked conversationally.

            “He’s just peachy,” I said.  “He loves cutting up dead bodies.”

            “Then I guess being a coroner is an ideal job for him.”

            “Seems that way.”

            I parked in the university lot, and we all walked to Heero’s lab together.

            “Duooooo,” Heero’s lab assistant, Tiffany, squealed with delight as we walked in.  She had been squealing my name like that ever since she walked in on me straddling Heero with my tongue down his throat.  She was under the misguided delusion that Heero was a shy and naive manchild who just needed someone to love him, and apparently I was that person.

            “Tiffannnnnny!” I called back, giving her my biggest, fakest smile.

            Heero glared at me.

            I winked at him.  “Look, I brought guests!”

            “Agent Satou,” Wufei said, like he said it all the time.

            I blanched at the awful name.

            “Chang,” Heero said with a nod, keying the gate to the autopsy platform open and stepping down to join us.  “Po.”

            “Hey, Heero,” Sally said, waiting for Heero to remove his gloves before giving him a handshake.  “It’s good to see you.”

            “What can you tell us about the body?” Wufei asked, done with the pleasantries.

            “Since it just arrived here about five minutes ago, about all I can tell you is that it’s definitely dead,” Heero assured Wufei.

            I snorted.  I loved when Heero was a sassy bitch.

            “Thanks for confirming that,” Sally said with a grateful nod.

            Wufei fumed.

            God, I loved all these sassy bitches.  Well, if I was capable of love, anyway.

            Wufei went over to the platform, peering over the gate at the dead body like it might somehow solve the mystery for him.  Sally joined him with a roll of her eyes.

            “Two visits in two days?” Heero asked softly, smiling at me as his hand brushed against mine.

            “Just can’t get enough of these dead bodies in your lab,” I said, smiling back.  I wanted to kiss him, but decided that would be weird in front of Wufei and Sally.  I wasn’t in the mood for a lecture on professional behavior while on duty.

            Heero looped a finger with mine briefly before letting go and heading back to his corpse.

            I was pretty sure that Heero loved me, which was adorable but I so didn’t get it.  For all that he was like me, Heero and I were also very, very different.  I was a monster made in blood and he was a monster made in a lab.

            The war and being betrayed by the colonies was what had taken the last bit of my humanity, though it was just the final step in a process that had started on the streets of L2 years and years ago.

            For Heero, it was a visit to a lab on L1 after the Marimeia uprising.  Heero had been a lab rat since his pre-teen years, genetically modified to the point that he experienced pain as pleasure.  The Barton Foundation scientists had tried to train the humanity out of him, but Dr. J had always protested and tried to protect Heero from becoming the soulless killing machine that the others wanted.

            But Dr. J was presumed dead now, and the remnant of scientists still lurking in the almost-defunct lab had no qualms about stripping away as much of Heero’s humanity as they could get at.

            He welcomed it, having sought them out after he failed to do what he had to do and Relena Peacecraft had ended up dead because of it.  The monster that had slowly been dying away since he first crashed to the earth roared back to life under the scientists’ experimentation.

            He came to L2 soon after, seeking out the comfort of a fellow monster.

            He was cute like that.  I didn’t mind.

            Now he stood on the autopsy platform, pushing his oversized glasses up his nose as they repeatedly slid down it, explaining to Wufei and Sally what he’d found on the first body.

            It was boring, so I drank coffee with Tiffany while she tittered on about her new boyfriend.  That was also boring, but it involved coffee, so yay.

            “All right, Maxwell, we’re moving out,” Wufei said, coming to collect me.  “Yuy’s going to call us as soon as he finishes the autopsy on the second body.”

            I knew he couldn’t keep the Satou thing up.

            After waving to Tiffany and Heero, the three of us trooped back to my car.

            “So,” I said, starting up the car.

            Wufei glared at me from where I stared at him in the rearview mirror.

            “Where to next?” I prodded.

            “Back to the office,” Wufei said.  “We need to report in to the commander.”

            “Okey dokey,” I agreed, backing out of my parking space and heading back to the office.  “So you really think someone is after me?”  The idea wasn’t very appealing.  I liked me, and people trying to slice me up into little pieces just weren’t my kind of people.

            “It all comes back to you,” Wufei said flatly.

            That gave me pause.  Was he saying what I thought he was?  Did he suspect little old me of these heinous crimes?

            I thought about my dreams from the previous nights.  The blood.

            But it wasn’t like I was getting up in the middle of the night and killing people in my sleep.  Besides, Heero had been with me all night.  I think he would have noticed if I got out of bed to kill someone.  Heero was a soldier and a monster to boot, so it really just seemed like something that he would notice.

            Right?

            We got back to the office where a lone police officer manned the door, making sure that no one went in.

            Wufei yelled at him, Sally smacked Wufei in the head and politely showed her badge to the man, and we all went inside.  There were still two forensics guys nosing around, scraping for microscopic clues in the carpeting.  I had sent Reyes and Lancaster home for the day, so if we ignored the two squints then we had the office to ourselves.

            Wufei went over to my desk like he owned it, using my vid phone to dial up central.

            “Would you like some coffee, Sally?” I asked politely.

            “That would be great,” she said with a smile.

            “Why don’t you have a seat at Reyes’s computer,” I offered, pulling the chair out for her.  “Let me know if you need anything else.”

            “You’re a doll,” she said, flashing me a grin.

            “Aw, shucks,” I said, going to make the coffee.  As I waited for everything to get percolating, I looked at my majestic post-it note rainbow.  The pot that had held the body was now gone, off to be analyzed by the lab geeks.  I wondered if I should be feeling sad or guilty about my agent being horribly murdered.  Probably.  But did I have to pretend in front of Wufei and Sally?  Probably not.

            Then again, it seemed like Wufei suspected me of something here…

            It wasn’t like Wufei was some great saint.  He’d said a big fuck you to all of us when he joined up with Marimeia’s army.

            Not that I really cared if someone dropped a colony on the earth.  It’s just that it would be so _inconvenient_ if someone did.  And Wufei with the giant stick of justice up his ass should have definitely cared about the inconvenience caused by millions of people dropping dead and the earth becoming somewhat uninhabitable.

            So just because I’d become a bit sociopathic was no reason for Wufei of all people to be thinking that I was out murdering people.

            I poured a mug of coffee for Sally and brought it over to her.  She accepted it with a warm smile.  I poured a mug for Wufei, and he accepted it with a dismissive grunt.

            “I didn’t kill them.”  Probably.

            Wufei looked me full in the eye then.  I felt like the Dragon was appraising me.  “I know,” he finally said, looking away.

            “Then why are you being such a turd?” I asked sullenly.  Not that Wufei was the friendliest of guys, but we had an understanding as fellow child soldiers.  We were pretty much on the same team.  Usually.  And I didn’t disdain him, which put him slightly below Sally, way below Heero, but quite high in my esteem over the rest of the world.

            Wufei gave me a long look.  “I’ll protect you, Maxwell,” he said finally.

            “The fuck?”

            Wufei went back to working on _my_ computer.

            I scratched my head, wandering over to Sally.

            “He’s fond of you,” she explained.

            “Yes, of course,” I agreed, making a face to show my disagreement.

            Sally just laughed, then pointed to the computer screen.  “You recognize any of these guys?”

            I studied the pictures then shrugged.  “Nope.”

            “The one in the middle is the first vic, and the other two were also involved in the Maxwell Church Massacre.”

            Something cold wrapped around my insides, and the God of Death started whispering encouraging things in my ear about ways to make the other two vanish from the earth sphere.

            Sally was looking at me calculatingly, so I quickly put on what I thought to be the appropriate expression: muted anger with an attempt at professionalism.

            “I see,” I said, a cold rage bubbling under my tone.  I was nothing if not a consummate actor.

            Sally touched my hand lightly.  She knew better than to say some kind of trite, reassuring words.

            So Sally thought I was upset about the senseless slaying of all those who I held dear, when really I was kind of tantalized by the prospect of meeting those other two military men and perhaps assisting the murderer in a little dissection.

            Wait, what?

            I moved over to Lancaster’s desk and took a seat so I was safely out of view.  Damn, my urge to kill had started to get a little out of control.  I needed to see Heero.  It was crawling under my skin, and the only way to stop it was blood.

            “Duo?” Sally said, jerking me out of my thoughts.

            “Hm, yeah?” I asked, trying to look normal when I turned around to face her.

            “We want to go stake one of those guys out,” she said.  “He’s still here on L2, so there’s a chance he might be the next victim.”

            “Okay,” I said.

            “We’re thinking that I can team up with one of your agents, and Wufei will take you home.”

            I gave her the look that idea deserved.  And yet somehow that crafty woman ended up getting me to agree with her, climbing into my car with Wufei in the back as she waved to us from the sidewalk.

            “She has devil powers,” I muttered.

            “That’s what I’ve been saying,” Wufei said with a fond upward twitch of his mouth.

            “Seriously, are you two fucking?”

            “Are you and Yuy?” he shot back, eyes staring out the window.

            “No,” I said with a smug smile, because technically we were not in fact fucking.

            “He slept over your place last night,” he said.

            “How the hell do you know that?!” I demanded, flailing my arms around even though I was supposed to be driving.

            “He told me.”

            “What does where Heero Yuy sleeps have to do with a discussion about corpses?!” I demanded, making as many crazy and over-exaggerated faces as possible.

            “Knock it off, Maxwell.”

            I blinked, letting all of the expression leave my face.  I really didn’t have to pretend with Wufei, and I let myself relax.  “Seriously, though.”

            “I just wanted to know where you were last night.”

            “Stalker,” I said, eyeing him in the mirror.

            The Dragon smiled back at me.  It was not a nice smile.

            We went to my apartment.

            “What now?” I asked.

            “I’ll guard you.”

            “I must preface this with I don’t even need a guard,” I said.  “But why are you so sure someone is after me?”

            His eyes flicked to me, and I swear the pupil looked slit like a snake’s.  “Because we know.”

            “Well we don’t agree,” I said, feeling the cold tendrils of the God of Death wrap around me.  My monster wasn’t worried.  He was excited.

            “What does Yuy think?” Wufei asked, creepy snake eyes still boring into mine.

            “We haven’t really talked about it…”

            Wufei shifted his weight from one foot to the other, giving me the impression of a snake coiling, ready to strike.

            “Seriously, Wu, what do you know?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest and starting to feel annoyed.

            “I can’t say yet.”

            “Fuck you then,” I said, moving into the apartment and flopping on the couch.  I turned on the TV and started surfing aimlessly through the channels.

            “We’ve seen this kind of kill before,” Wufei said, sitting down next to me.

            “I’m sure this guy isn’t the first to chop his victims up.”

            “And drain the blood?”

            “And drain the blood.  Everyone wants to be a vampire.”

            “I thought you wanted to know what I know.”

            “Yeah, but this all sounds like convoluted conjecture.  How do you know it’s the same guy?”

            “We know,” he breathed out, slit pupils reemerging.

            “Who was the previous victim?”

            “Nathaniel Barton.”

            I paused at that.  “The guy behind Relena’s assassination?”

            “Yes.”

            “And he was chopped up into pieces?”

            “Yes.”

            “No blood?”

            “No blood.”

            “Shit.”

            Three years ago, the Preventers had gotten wind on a planned attempt on Marimeia Khushrenada’s life and had called the big guns in, namely me and Heero.  It was all a bunch of complicated bullshit that I couldn’t be bothered to listen to.

The reasons behind these little wars had long stopped mattering to me.  People wanted power.  That’s what it always came down to.  They used pretty words like ‘peace’ and ‘equality’, but I’d had enough of that bullshit rhetoric for a lifetime.  Those in power would always subjugate those below them.  There would always be war.  I understood it perfectly by then, and I understood my role in it.

Heero did not.

           “Let her try,” he’d said, holding out his arm to get me to lower my gun currently aimed at the assassin’s head.

            Relena stood in front of Marimeia, arms thrust out protectively as she spoke about peace and about how death and war were not the answer.

            The assassin shot Relena in the head.

            I didn’t hesitate, emptying my gun into the man and then dashing over to Marimeia, picking her up and getting her the fuck out of there.

            Heero stayed behind, cradling Relena’s lifeless body.

            I didn’t see him again until he appeared on L2 a year later, calling himself Heero Satou.  He’d changed, much more like the Heero I’d met at the beginning of the war, yet subtly different.

            “What’s your gut telling you, Duo?”

            I looked at Wufei, looking so very out of place in my messy apartment with his perfectly pressed Preventers uniform.  Then I closed my eyes and turned inward.

           A sibilant laugh echoed through my head.  Relena’s murder.  The Maxwell Church Massacre.  The Preventers.  Blood.

            Blood.

            Blood.

            Blood blood blood bloodbloodbloodbloodbloodbloodblood.

            I opened my eyes with a gasp.

            Wufei watched me silently, his expression flat.

            “He’s… close…” I said slowly.

            “How close?”

            I opened my mouth to speak, only to be startled by the buzzing of my phone.  I glanced at the screen before answering.  “It’s Heero,” I mouthed to Wufei.  “Yeah?”

            “I finished the preliminary autopsy.”

            “Okay, I’ll put you on speaker with Wufei.”

            Heero grunted his acknowledgement.

            “Say ‘hi’, Wu,” I said, poking him playfully in the arm.

            “Shut up, Maxwell.”

            “The same tools were used on the first and second victim for dismemberment,” Heero droned, ignoring whatever was happening on our side of the conversation.  “A medical grade bone saw was used for much of the cutting.  Many of the cuts were sustained while the victim was still alive, leading me to believe the cause of death may be blood loss.”

            “Wait, he sliced these guys up while they were still alive?”

            “I will be running more tests to confirm my current suppositions.”

            “No, but seriously, he sliced these guys up while they were still alive?” I marveled.  It was horrible, but kind of interesting.

            “I put time of death between two and four a.m. this morning,” Heero continued, ignoring me.

            “So the killer held the victim hostage,” Wufei mused out loud.  “Any signs of captivity?”

            “Due to the dismemberment, it is difficult to ascertain certain details without more in-depth study, but it appears that the victim may possibly have been restrained with some kind of solid binding such as handcuffs.”

            “Kinky.”

            “Shut up, Maxwell,” Wufei said.

            “I’ll be returning to work now,” Heero said.  “If there’s nothing else…?”

            “Come over tonight?” I said, a hint of desperation in my voice.

            “Oh?” said Heero, sounding amused.

            Wufei raised an eyebrow at me.

            “Don’t leave me all alone with this crazy Chinese man,” I whined.

            Wufei rolled his eyes.

            “I thought you hated when Wufei and I are together,” Heero said.  “Something about how we gang up on you?”

            “That is very true, you two are total assholes together,” I agreed.

            “So…?” Heero said.

            “You can be in separate rooms.”

            Things did not work out as I planned.

            “You come here of your own free will?” Wufei asked as the two of them sat on my couch, drinking their stupid Asian tea while looking around my apartment disdainfully.

            “The place has its… charm,” Heero said slowly.

            Wufei snorted.

            “Don’t you two have better things to talk about than my home decorating?” I asked.

            They both just gave me their best ‘oh, Duo, you silly little boy’ looks and resumed drinking their tea.

            I really wanted to stab something.

            Wufei praised Heero’s cooking, and Heero commented on some award or other that the president of the earth sphere had given to Wufei.  They commented on how lazy I was and the poor state of the L2 Preventers.

            They didn’t talk about the case.  It didn’t strike me as odd until I realized that Heero and Wufei had not talked about work for the last three hours.  Why weren’t these two workaholics talking about work?

            The God of Death started whispering in my ear, telling me it was right in front of me.

            I stared at the two of them, feeling perplexed.  Something was happening here.  Something…

            “Heero,” I said, taking an uncertain step towards where he washing the dishes.

            “Yeah?” he said, turning around to face me with a dish in his hand.

            “I… don’t feel so good…”

            “Of course you don’t,” Heero said reasonably, turning back to the sink.

            I blinked at his turned back.

            “Duo,” Wufei said, and there was something strange about his tone.  He was standing next to Heero, drying a plate that was suddenly crashing to floor and shattering.

            I jumped, then found it difficult to keep my balance.  My hand grasped at the kitchen counter, but my legs felt like jelly.

            “I always thought…” Wufei said, wavering on his own feet.  “I always thought it was a Gundam pilot.”

            I could barely hear him, but somehow the words penetrated through my hazy head.

            The God of Death laughed as everything went black.

 

* * * * *

 

            My head felt heavy.

            Heero smiled down at me fondly, smoothing the bangs from my eyes.  “You’re awake.”

            “Am I?” I muttered, reaching out and tugging at the bottom of his shirt.

            He sat down beside me, touching my face gently.  “Don’t worry.  We can start soon.”

            “Start what?” I asked, resting my hand on his thigh.  It was a very nice thigh, all taut and muscular.

            Heero kissed my forehead.

            There was a sound behind him.

            “I feel weird,” I said.

            “That’s the drugs,” Heero said, pressing his forehead to mine.  “They should be wearing off.”

            “Drugs?” I repeated, feeling confused.

            There was that sound again.

            I blinked, trying to place my surroundings.  I was sitting on… my recliner?  Heero was sitting on the arm of the chair.  We were… we had been eating dinner.  With Wufei.  And now we were sitting in the living room.

            The sound was getting louder.

            It reminded me of a homicidal Chinese man.

            “Wufei…” I said.

            “He knows,” Heero said, patting my arm reassuringly.

            “Knows what?” I asked.

            “About us.”

            “Everyone knows about us,” I murmured.  “Remember that time Halperin came into the office early and found us on the copy machine?”

            Heero chuckled, tracing a finger down my arm.

            “Heero, what’s on the table?”

            “Wufei.”

            “Why is he on the table?”

            “Because he knows.”

            I was missing something here.  _The murders_ came a voice whispering through my head.  _Heero_.

            Wufei, bound to the table, let out another very angry sounding noise around the shirt that had been used to gag him.

            “Heero…” I said slowly, eyeing the bulky object sitting next to the table.  “Is that a… bone saw?”

            “Yes, I’ve been keeping it in the bottom of your closet,” Heero said.  “I hope you don’t mind.”

            “Are you going to use it on Wufei?”

            “Oh, yes, most likely.”

            “Are you going to use it on me?”

            “Why would I do that?”

            I stared into the depths of his blue eyes, staring into the beast there that growled at me possessively.  The God of Death acquiesced, untroubled.

            “I’m yours,” I said, hooking a finger into his belt.

            Heero grunted his assent.

            “Are you mine?” I asked.

           He gave me one of those patronizing looks of his that told me very clearly that I was asking a stupid question.

            “You killed them for me?”

            Another patronizing look.

            “I don’t want you to kill Wufei,” I said slowly.  It felt wrong.  Not in the sense that it was wrong to kill other people, but in the sense that it was wrong to kill Wufei, our brother.

            “He knows.”

            “He won’t tell.”

            Heero cast a dubious gaze at the lump on the table.

            “There’s so much I don’t understand,” I said, pulling Heero closer and feeling his arms wrap around me.

            “I’m sorry,” Heero said, a rare apology coming from him.  “But Wufei knows.”

            “What does he know?” I asked.

            The God of Death laughed uproariously.

            My brow creased in confusion.

            “He knows that we’re both killers,” Heero explained.

            “Uh, well so is he,” I said.  “So is anyone who fought in the war.”

            “Not that kind of killer,” Heero said.  “He’s been investigating us.”

            “Huh…?”

            “He knows what I did to Nathanial Barton.”

            “He was a bad man,” I said.

            “He knows what you did Sister Helen and Father Maxwell.  And to Solo.”

            “I… what…?”

            The laughter in my head was so loud I could barely hear Heero’s words.

            “You… vaccines… watched him…”

_I had come rushing back into our hideout, clutching the bag of vaccines.  Some toppled to the ground in my haste to reach him.  There he was, just as I’d left him.  But it was too late.  Solo was already dead._

_Wasn’t he?_

            _The vaccines.  Hidden in a dumpster.  I was waiting.  I held his hand, I wiped his brow with a rag.  I pleaded with him to stay alive._

_He could make it one more day._

_I kept putting it off, watching him get closer and closer to death._

_He was feeding off of it, my dark passenger, my God of Death.  Watching the life leave Solo’s eyes.  Just one more day._

_Just one more day._

_And then there were no more days, just me with a bag full vaccines and Solo’s dead body._

            “No,” I whispered.

            “Yes,” the God of Death breathed.

            “No,” I said more loudly.  “No.  No no no.  Nonononononononono!”

            I was screaming.

            Heero pulled my hands from my face.  “Duo, it’s okay.”

            I looked at him.  “I didn’t kill Solo.”

            “Yes, you did.”

            “I didn’t kill Sister Helen.”

            “Yes, you did.”

            _“Duo, what are you doing?!” she screamed._

_I pushed the dead rebel away from me and looked up at her.  “I’m protecting the church.”_

            “The Alliance killed them.  The Alliance destroyed the church.”

            “You destroyed the church with the mobile suit you stole.”

            Everything was running together in my head.  It was like my memories were rewriting themselves, the past transforming into something very different.

            “I killed Sister Helen.”

            “Yes.”

            “I killed Father Maxwell.”

            “Yes.”

            “I killed Solo.”

            “Yes.”

            “Why?”

            “Because you like to watch people die.”

            “Oh.”  I couldn’t really argue with that.  “Are we going to kill Wufei now?”

            “Yes.”

            Heero got up and I followed.  I was still a little woozy from the drugs, but I wobbled behind Heero to the table.

            Wufei was duct taped to the table, layers and layers of brownish colored tape wrapped around him, with clear sheeting under him.

            He looked pissed.

            “He’s like us, isn’t he?”

            Heero handed me a very pointy knife.  “He’s been investigating you.  He was interviewing those Alliance soldiers who were at the Maxwell Church Massacre.  He heard that a single boy in a stolen mobile suit did all of the damage, that the Alliance covered it up so the world wouldn’t know that they’d been bested by a 9-year-old.”

            _“They keep sending him back,” Sister Helen said, shaking her head._

_The foster families didn’t tell her about the disappearing pets._

            “Was I born this way?” I asked, tugging on Heero’s shirt again.  It was like a security blanket.

            Heero patted my head like a child.  “I don’t think any of us were born this way.  It just got into us one day.”

            “I see,” I said.  “But I always thought that this darkness started growing in me when Solo died, that it continued to grow out of the Maxwell Church Massacre.  But it was already there, wasn’t it?  Because I did those things myself.”

            Heero studied me for a moment.  “You’ve repressed a lot of your memories.  So you don’t remember your mother?”

            “My mother?” I repeated.

            “We can talk about it later,” Heero said.  “We need to take care of Wufei before Sally gets suspicious.”

            I thought of Sally.  She would be sad that Wufei was gone.

            “Do you want to make the first cut?” Heero asked.

            “Yes,” I said.  I looked at Wufei, helpless but still fighting like a raging beast.  “But I can’t.”

            “Duo?” Heero said, sounding confused.

            I stabbed him in the gut.  It wasn’t a fatal wound, but it would bleed.

            He looked so sad.  I didn’t know if I could ever truly understand Heero’s monster, how he could feel things like love and sadness, yet be ready to kill our brother Wufei without batting an eye.

            “I didn’t kill them,” I told him, caressing his cheek.  “You’re wrong.  Solo died from the virus, and everyone at the Maxwell Church was slaughtered by the Alliance.”  All of my memories clicked safely back into place.  Maybe there was a hole here and there, but as long as I didn’t poke or prod at them, it would be okay.

            “I… love you…” he said, touching the wound with a shiver of pleasure.

            “I’m very fond of you,” I told him.  “Now run before the cops show up.”

            “I’m not leaving without you.”

            “You have to.”

            We stared at each other, Heero’s monster roaring to life.  I flinched but stood my ground.

            “This isn’t over,” he said, and then he left, knife still sticking out of his belly.

            I sighed.  “I sure hope not.”  Then I looked at Wufei.  The murderous intent in his eyes did not make me feel very comfortable, but against my better judgment I undid his gag.

            “You fucking psychopath, what the hell?!  You were going to kill me!”

            “Yes,” I said.  “But I didn’t.  That should count for something, right?”

            “It counts for shit!” he snarled.

            I gagged him again, just because I could.  Then I called up Sally and waited for all the noise and chaos to arrive.

            Wufei’s report was simple.  Heero had drugged us both, I had overpowered him, but he had gotten away.

            I got a commendation from the Preventers for my heroic actions.

            “Why didn’t you report me?” I asked Wufei as we sat together in the spaceport, waiting for Sally to get out of the bathroom.

            “There’s nothing to report,” Wufei said simply.

            “Why were you investigating me in the first place?”

            “Because I wanted to know the truth.”

            “And what is the truth?” I asked.

            “That you’re like me,” he answered, and then Sally came back and the two disappeared into spaceport security.

            As I walked towards the parking lot, the most wanted posters caught my eye.  There was Heero, glaring out at me from the wall of the airport.  I brushed my fingertips against his cheek, smiling fondly.

            “Hurry up and finish this,” I whispered to him.

            Then I sauntered outside to my car with a little pep in my step.  I even whistled a jaunty tune.

            It was so easy to convince people that you were human.

            The God of Death laughed the whole ride home.


End file.
